Knowledge Sharing: Some Myths, Ideas, and a little IT Jean E. Engle Chief Knowledge Officer Johnson Space Center

2 Teamwork – Key to a Successful Space Program A Little History of NASA Teamwork – Key to a Successful Space Program

3 … and JSC JSC manages the development, testing, production and delivery of all U.S. human spacecraft and all human spacecraft-related functions. Home of the Astronaut Corps and Mission Control Workforce consists of ~3000 civil servants and ~14,000 contractors

4 Major Programs – Space Shuttle Fly the Shuttle safely until retirement in 2010 Essential for the core completion of the ISS One last Hubble Telescope repair mission

5 Major Programs – ISS

6 Major Programs – Constellation Bring a new Crew Exploration Vehicle into service in 2015 to replace the Shuttle Program.

7 Defining Knowledge Sharing

8 A Few Myths With Acknowledgement to Dr. Ed Rogers – GSFC CKO* 10.Culture change can be mandated from the top 9.Collaboration effort can be “purchased” or “sharing be rewarded” 8.KM efforts can be outsourced 7.Anybody (who isn’t busy) can do KM 6.KM can be solved by buying the right software 5.KM can be independent of the business process 4.Communities of practice can be established by the top 3.KM is about centralizing knowledge content to use it more efficiently 2.KM is really about databases 1.KM is an IT function and should be given to the CIO *Some of these myths are adapted from a “Top Ten Mistakes of CoP’s” list produced by John Hickok, director, Defense Acquisition University (DAU), knowledge management.

9 A Different Approach Benchmarking (a studied approach) Various entities inside/outside Government and Aerospace industry Consortium studies with the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) Colleague at other NASA Center Center-wide Knowledge Management maturity assessment Provided insight into how much knowledge sharing was occurring and where Identified strengths and gaps/barriers

10 A Different Approach The following concepts evolved: Leadership – modeled behavior Local Learning – encourage Codify -- when appropriate Change management – takes time

11 A Few Ideas -- People Generational differences (average age is around 45 years) What is on incoming undergrads minds? Learning curve Technology Gap Engage Younger Employees More on their perspective…

12 A Few More Ideas -- Technology Google – installed but… Led to identifying repositories, beginning with websites Which is leading towards identifying usage of websites Which will lead towards document and content management strategies Supported by stronger taxonomies and metadata structures

13 A Few More Ideas – Process Social networking Pause and Learn Integrate Risk Management with Knowledge Management Information lifecycle management Tacit knowledge capture

14 A Few More Ideas – People/Technology/Process Web-enabled High Performance Teams Knowledge Sharing Forums Case Studies – teaching by providing context to a story Web 2.0 technologies – enabler for infusion, collaboration, and sharing

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